Use of Weapons

by Iain M. Banks

  More than anything else now, though, he wanted to save Darckense. He had seen too many dead, dry eyes, too much air-blackened blood, too much fly-blown flesh, to be able to relate such ghastly truths to the nebulous ideas of honour and tradition that people claimed they were fighting for. Only the well-being of one loved person seemed really worth fighting for now; it was all that seemed real, all that could save his sanity. To acknowledge the interest millions of other people had in whatever happened here was to place too great a burden on him; it would be to admit, by implication, that he was at least partially responsible for the deaths already of hundreds of thousands, even if nobody else could have fought more humanely.

  So he waited; held back the commanders and the squadron leaders, and waited for Elethiomel to reply to his signals.

  The two other commanders said nothing. He put out the lights in the car, un-shuttered the doors, and looked out at the dark mass of the forest, racing past under dull dawn skies the colour of steel.

  They moved past dim bunkers, dark trenches, still figures, stopped trucks, sunken tanks, taped windows, hooded guns, raised poles, grey clearings, wrecked buildings and slitted lamps; all the paraphernalia of the outskirts of the headquarters camp. He watched it all and wished - as they moved closer to the centre, to the old castle that had become his home in all but name over the last couple of months - he wished that he did not have to stop, and could just go on driving through the dawn and the day and the night again forever, cleaving the finally unyielding trees towards nothing and nowhere and no-one - even if it was in an icy silence - secure in the nadir of his sufferings, perversely content that at least now they could grow no worse; just to go on and on and never have to stop and make decisions that would not wait but which might mean he would commit mistakes he could never forget and would never be forgiven for...

  The car reached the castle courtyard and he got out. Surrounded by aides, he swept into the grand old house that had, once, been Elethiomel's HQ.

  They pestered him with a hundred details of logistics and intelligence reports and skirmishes and small amounts of ground lost or gained; there were requests from civilians and the foreign press for this and that. He dismissed them all, told the junior commanders to deal with them. He took the stairs to his offices two at a time, handed his jacket and cap to his ADC, and closed himself in his darkened study, his eyes closed, his back against the double doors, the brass handles still clutched in his hands at the small of his back. The quiet, dark room was a balm.

  'Been out to gaze upon the beast, have you?'

  He started, then recognized Livueta's voice. He saw her by the windows, a dark figure. He relaxed. 'Yes,' he said. 'Close the drapes.'

  He turned on the room lights.

  'What are you going to do?' she said, walking slowly closer, her arms folded, her dark hair gathered up, her face troubled.

  'I don't know,' he admitted, going to the desk and sitting. He put his face in his hands and rubbed it. 'What would you have me do?'

  'Talk with him,' she said, sitting on the corner of the desk, arms still crossed. She was dressed in a long dark skirt, dark jacket. She was always in dark clothes now-days.

  'He won't talk to me,' he said, sitting back in the ornate chair he knew the junior officers called his throne. 'I can't make him reply.'

  'You can't be saying the right things,' she said.

  'I don't know what to say, then,' he said, closing his eyes again. 'Why don't you compose the next message?'

  'You wouldn't let me say what I'd want to say, or if you let me say it, you wouldn't live up to it.'

  'We can't just all lay down our weapons, Livvy, and I don't think anything else would work; he wouldn't pay any attention.'

  'You could meet face to face; that might be the way to settle things.'

  'Livvy; the first messenger we sent personally came back without his SKIN!' He screamed the last word, suddenly losing all patience and control. Livueta flinched, and stepped away from the desk. She sat in an ornamental winged couch, her long fingers rubbing at the gold thread sewn into an arm.

  'I'm sorry,' he said quietly. 'I didn't mean to shout.'

  'She's our sister, Cheradenine. There must be more we can do.'

  He looked about the room, as though for some fresh inspiration, 'Livvy; we have been over this and over this and over this; don't you... can't I get it through? Isn't it clear?' He slapped both hands on the desk. 'I am doing all I can. I want her out of there as much as you do, but while he has her, there is just nothing more I can do; except attack, and that probably would be the death of her.'

  She shook her head. 'What is it between you two?' she asked. 'Why won't you talk to each other? How can you forget everything from when we were children?'

  He shook his head, pushed himself up from the desk, turned to the book-lined wall behind, gaze running over the hundreds of titles without really seeing them. 'Oh,' he said tiredly, 'I haven't forgotten, Livueta.' He felt a terrible sadness then, as though the extent of what he felt they had all lost only became real to him when there was somebody else there to acknowledge it. 'I haven't forgotten anything.'

  'There must be something else you can do,' she insisted.

  'Livueta, please believe me; there isn't.'

  'I believed you when you told me she was safe and well,' the woman said, looking down at the arm of the couch, where her long nails had started to pick at the precious thread. Her mouth was a tight line.

  'You were ill,' he sighed.

  'What difference does that make?'

  'You might have died!' he said. He went to the curtains and began straightening them. 'Livueta; I couldn't have told you they had Darckle; the shock -'

  'The shock for this poor, weak woman,' Livueta said, shaking her head, still tearing at the threads on the couch arm. 'I'd rather you spared me that insulting nonsense than spare me the truth about my own sister.'

  'I was only trying to do what was best,' he told her, starting towards her, then stopping, retreating to the corner of the desk where she had sat.

  'I'm sure,' she said laconically. 'The habit of taking responsibility comes with your exalted position, I suppose. I am expected to be grateful, no doubt.'

  'Livvy, please, must you -?'

  'Must I what?' She looked at him, eyes sparkling. 'Must I make life difficult for you? Yes?'

  'All I want,' he said slowly, trying to control himself. 'Is for you to try... and understand. We need to... to stick together, to support each other right now.'

  'You mean I have to support you even though you won't support Darckle,' Livueta said.

  'Dammit, Livvy!' he shouted. 'I am doing my best! There isn't just her; there's a lot of other people I have to worry about. All my men; the civilians in the city; the whole damn country!' He went forward to her, knelt in front of the winged couch, put his hand on the same arm that her long-nailed hand picked at. 'Livueta; please. I am doing all it is possible to do. Help me in this. Back me up. The other commanders want to attack; I'm all there is between Darckense and -'

  'Maybe you should attack,' she said suddenly. 'Maybe that's the one thing he isn't expecting.'

  He shook his head. 'He has her in the ship; we'd have to destroy that before we can take the city.' He looked her in the eye. 'Do you trust him not to kill her, even if she isn't killed in the attack?'

  'Yes,' Livueta said. 'Yes, I do.'

  He held her gaze for a while, certain that she would recant or at least look away, but she just kept looking straight back at him. 'Well,' he said eventually, 'I can't take that risk.' He sighed, closing his eyes, resting his head against the arm of the couch. 'There's so much... pressure on me.' He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. 'Livueta, don't you think I feel? Don't you think I care about what happens to Darckle? Do you think that I'm not still the brother you knew as well as the soldier they made me? Do you think that because I have an army to do my bidding, and ADCs and junior officers to obey every whim, I don't get lonely?'

&nb
sp; She stood up suddenly, without touching him. 'Yes,' she said, looking down at him, while he looked at the threads of gold on the couch arm. 'You are lonely, and I am lonely, and Darckense is lonely, and he is lonely, and everybody is lonely!'

  She turned quickly, the long skirt briefly belling, and walked to the door and out. He heard the doors slam, and stayed where he was, kneeling in front of the abandoned couch like some rejected suitor. He pushed his smallest finger through a loop in the gold thread Livueta had teased from the couch arm, and pulled at it until it burst.

  He got up slowly, walked to the window, slipped through the drapes and stood looking out at the grey dawn. Men and machines moved through the vague wisps of mist, grey skeins like nature's own gauzy camouflage nets.

  He envied the men he could see. He was sure most of them envied him, in return; he was in control, he had the soft bed and did not have to tread through trench mud, or deliberately stub his toes against rocks to keep awake on guard duty... But he envied them, nevertheless, because they only had to do what they were told. And - he admitted to himself - he envied Elethiomel.

  Would that he were more like him, he thought, all too often. To have that ruthless cunning, that extemporising guile; he wanted that.

  He slunk back through the drapes, guilty at the thought. At the desk he turned the room lights off and sat back in the seat. His throne, he thought and, for the first time in days, laughed a little, because it was such an image of power and he felt so utterly powerless.

  He heard a truck draw up outside the window, where it was not supposed to. He sat still, suddenly thinking; a massive bomb, just out there... and was suddenly terrified. He heard a sergeant barking, some talk, and then the truck moved a little way off, though he could still hear its engine.

  After a while, he heard raised voices in the hall stair-well. There was something about the tone of the voices that chilled him. He tried to tell himself he was being foolish, and turned all the lights back on, but he could still hear them. Then there was something like a scream, cut-off abruptly. He shook. He unholstered his pistol, wishing he had something more lethal than this slim little dress-uniform gun. He went to the door. The voices sounded odd; some were raised, while some people were apparently trying to keep theirs quiet. He opened the door a crack, then went through; his ADC was at the far door, onto the stairs, looking down.

  He put the pistol back in his holster. He walked out to join the ADC, and followed his gaze, down into the hall. He saw Livueta, staring wide-eyed back up at him; there were a few other soldiers, one of the other commanders. They stood round a small white chair. He frowned; Livueta looked upset.He went quickly down the steps; Livueta suddenly came bounding up to meet him, skirt hem flying. She pushed into him, both hands against his chest. He staggered back, amazed.

  'No,' she said. Her eyes were bright and staring; her face looked more pale than he'd ever seen before. 'Go back,' she said. Her voice sounded thick, like it was not her own.

  'Livueta...' he said, annoyed, and pushed himself away from the wall, trying to glance round her at whatever was happening in the hall round the little white chair.

  She pushed him again. 'Go back,' the thick, strange voice said.

  He took her wrists in his hands, 'Livueta,' he said, voice low, eyes flicking to indicate the people standing beneath in the hall.

  'Go back,' the strange, terrifying voice said.

  He pushed her away, annoyed at her, tried to go past her. She attempted to grab him from behind. 'Back!' she gasped.

  'Livueta, stop this!' he shook her off, embarrassed now. He clattered quickly down the steps before she could grab him again.

  Still she threw herself down after him, clutched at his waist. 'Go back!' she wailed.

  He turned round. 'Get off me! I want to see what's going on!' He was stronger than her; he tore her arms free, threw her down on the stairs. He went down, walked across the flagstones to where the silent group of men stood round the little white chair.

  It was very small; it looked so delicate that an adult might have broken it. It was small and white, and as he took a couple of more paces forwards, as the rest of the people and the hall and the castle and the world and the universe disappeared into the darkness and the silence and he came closer and slowly closer to the chair, he saw that it had been made out of the bones of Darckense Zakalwe.

  Femora formed the back legs, tibiae and some other bones the front. Arm bones made the seat frame; the ribs were the back. Beneath them was the pelvis; the pelvis that had been shattered years earlier, in the stone boat, its bone fragments rejoined; the darker material the surgeons had used quite visible too. Above the ribs, there was the collar bone, also broken and healed, memoir of a riding accident.

  They had tanned her skin and made a little cushion out of it; a tiny plain button in her navel, and at one corner, just the hint, the start of some dark but slightly red-tinged hair.

  There were stairs, and Livueta, and the ADC, and the ADC's office, between there and here, he found himself thinking, as he stood at his desk again.

  He tasted blood in his mouth, looked down at his right hand. He seemed to recall having punched Livueta on his way up the stairs. What a terrible thing to do to one's own sister.

  He looked about, distracted, for a moment. Everything looked blurred.

  Intending to rub his eyes, he raised one hand and found the pistol in it.

  He put it to his right temple.

  This was, of course, he realised, exactly what Elethiomel wanted him to do, but then, what chance did one have against such a monster? There was only so much a man could take, after all.

  He smiled at the doors (somebody was thumping on them, calling out a word that might have been his name; he couldn't remember now). So silly. Doing the Right Thing; the Only Way Out. The Honourable Exit. What a load of nonsense. Just despair, just the last laugh to have, opening a mouth through the bone to confront the world direct; here.

  But such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon...

  His hand was shaking. He could see the doors starting to give way; somebody must be hitting them very hard. He supposed he must have locked them; there was nobody else in the room. He ought to have chosen a bigger gun, he realised; this one might not be big enough to do the job.

  His mouth was very dry.

  He pressed the gun hard against his temple and pulled the trigger.

  The besieged forces round the Staberinde broke out within the hour, while the surgeons were still fighting for his life. It was a good battle, and they nearly won.

  Fourteen

  'Zakalwe...'

  'No.'

  Still the same refusal. They stood in a park, at the edge of a large, neatly mown lawn, under some tall, pollarded trees. The warm breeze carried the ocean scent and a hint of flowers, whispering through the copse. The clearing morning mist still veiled two suns. Sma shook her head in exasperation, and walked off a little way.

  He leant against a tree, clutching at his chest, breathing with difficulty. Skaffen-Amtiskaw hovered nearby, keeping a watch on the man, but playing with an insect on the trunk of another tree.

  Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought the man was mad; certainly he was weird. He had never really explained why he'd gone wandering through the mayhem of the citadel-storming. When Sma and the drone had finally found him and picked him up, bullet-riddled, half-dead and raving from the top of the curtain wall, he had insisted they stabilise his condition; no more. He did not want to be made well. He would not listen to sense, and still the Xenophobe - when it had picked them all up - had refused to pronounce the man insane and incapable of making up his own mind, and so had dutifully put him into a low-metabolism sleep for the fifteen day journey to the planet where the women called Livueta Zakalwe now lived.

  He'd come out of his slow-sleep as ill as he'd gone into it. The man was a walking mess and there were still two bullets inside him, but he refus
ed to accept any treatment until he'd seen this woman. Bizarre, Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought, using an extended field to block the path of a small insect as it felt and picked its way up the trunk of the tree. The insect changed direction, feelers waving. There was another type of insect further up the trunk, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was trying to get them to meet, to see what would happen.

  Bizarre, and even - indeed - perverse.

  'Okay.' He coughed (one lung, the drone knew, filling up with blood). 'Let's go.' He pushed himself away from the tree. Skaffen-Amtiskaw abandoned its game with the two insects regretfully. The drone felt odd, being here; the planet was known about but had not yet been fully investigated by Contact. It had been discovered through research rather than physical exploration, and - while there was nothing obviously outlandish about the place, and a very rudimentary survey had been carried out - technically it was still terra incognita, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was on a relatively high state of alert, just in case the place held any nasty surprises.

  Sma went to the bald-headed man and put her arm round his waist, helping to support him. Together they walked up the small slope of lawn towards a low ridge. Skaffen-Amtiskaw watched them go, from the cover of the tree tops, then swooped slowly down towards them as they walked to the summit of the gentle slope.

  The man staggered when he saw what was on the far side, in the distance. The drone suspected he would have fallen to the grass if Sma hadn't been there to hold him up.

  'Shiiit,' he breathed, and tried to straighten, blinking in a sudden slant of sunlight as the mists continued to evaporate.

  He stumbled another couple of steps, shook Sma off, and turned round once, taking in the parkland; shaped trees and manicured lawns, ornamental walls and delicate pergolas, stone-bordered ponds and shady paths through quiet groves. And, in the distance, set amongst mature trees, the tattered black shape of the Staberinde.